2007/12/10, j.j.:
> Hello again,
>
> I think a newbie can understand that there are two different
> technically principles of preformatted text.
>
> 1. The <pre> principle
> - preserves whitespace
> - allows markup as usual
> 2. The <xmp> principle
> - peserves whitesace
> - displays any HTML-like markup as text
> - doesn't allow "</xmp" inside
Of course, it just doesn't sound to me like a compelling argument in
favor of reintroducing XMP and making it valid.
XMP had been present in and valid as of HTML 4, the hypothetical
dialog in my previous mail wouldn't have made a compelling argument in
favor of dropping XMP from HTML5.
Now, keep in mind that XMP is still processed backwards compatibly
with HTML "1.0" and thus browsers (see the parsing section of the
current draft); it just isn't valid, as there are other ways –which
have been preferred since HTML 2.0– to achieve the same result.
There might be a need to semantically mark-up ASCII-art (i.e. provide
a textual alternative), but I don't think XMP is the way to go.
> In general, we (the HTML WG) should look beyond the edge of our
> dogfood plate. <xmp> fits for much more than HTML content.
Of course, though mark-up languages (such as HTML and XML) are much
more likely to cause trouble than, say, C or Java code, or math
formulas, which will contain presumably less "<" and "&" signs than
HTML or XML (or other SGML-like markup) fragments.
Of course, brainfuck is not "HTML friendly" if you do not have XMP,
but I don't think brainfuck weighs heavy in the balance ;-)
--
Thomas Broyer